


Something Stupid

by notabadday



Category: The West Wing, West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 22:18:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notabadday/pseuds/notabadday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A response to the episode War Crimes. This is explores what might happen if, some months later, Donna's diary did get out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Stupid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spinninginfinity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinninginfinity/gifts).



Donna felt a heavy wind leave her lips and realised the breath she had been holding. She had been standing, back against the wall, for the full five minutes that she had been back in her apartment but suddenly began to pace. Pacing was good. It was comforting, one step in front of the other. She could do that.

 The intercom buzzed. Twice.

 "Josh, please just leave me be. I don’t… I don’t want to talk to you right now, okay?”

 “Donna,” he said in that way that stirred the butterflies in her stomach. It was commanding but comforting. “Donna, I’m not going away.”

 She was silent.

 “Please, just let me come up so we can talk. You’re going to have to talk to me again at some point, you know.”

 “No.”

 “Yes.”

 “No, I was planning to transfer to…”

 “A different White House?”

 “Yes,” she retorted. “Or I’ll just move to Nova Scotia. I hear it’s lovely there. And Sam told me the way, so I could probably get there, you know? Maybe I’ll get a job in a nice office, with a boss who has only been subpoenaed like a couple of times.”

 “I work for the President, Donna. I think I’d be able to find you somehow.”

 “I’d buy a wig.”

 “Okay,” Josh laughed ever so slightly.

 “Okay.”

 There was a pause, and it gave Donna the time she needed to soften her resolve. He knew it too. “Let me up?”

 “Okay,” she repeated, sounding exactly the same as she had before. Then she pressed the buzzer.

 When he came to the door he was wet. Of course he was; it had been raining. She thought to herself how beautiful he was with damp hair, looking dishevelled. It was a thought that was quickly pushed to the back of her mind, violently, forcibly shoved to the back of her mind.

 “I’m sorry about what’s happening.”

 “It’s not your fault,” she said, coldly.

 He looked at her intently with his big apologetic brown eyes. He was so sorry. She felt like crying. She hadn’t, yet. Not once. But looking at Josh, with his wet hair and his sorry eyes, her heart shattered.

 “How do you feel?” he asked, awkwardly.

 “Humiliated.” She shrugged.

 “I’m gonna end him.” He paused, taking a sharp breath. “Toby, Sam, CJ, Leo – they’re all behind us. It’s gonna be fine.”

 “You said that before.”

 “What?”

 “It’s gonna be fine.” She repeated, looking in his eye but disengaging emotionally. “You said it when we were sat on the bench waiting for Cliff to read it. You said it was gonna be fine after that.”

 “It _is_ gonna be fine.”

 “Then why don’t I believe you?” Donna replied, dejectedly. “I can never go back. I can’t ever go back inside that White House, Josh. I can’t. Every person in that building has read the contents of my diary. And you… I can’t work for you anymore.”

 “That’s not true.”

 “Josh, you’re not that naïve.” 

“Donna, I had to stand in the Oval Office and look the President of the United States in the eye. Mary Marsh is already asking for my resignation, and she’s not the only one. If you don’t think we’re in this together, you’re crazy. Donna, I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.”

 “What? Why is Mary Marsh-”

 “Oh, she asks for my resignation upon all good holidays, occasions, minor scandals. I don’t care, Donna. I truly… I just don’t care. I just wanted to skip forward to this conversation. All of Washington thinks I’m the sleaze who seduced his assistant, and you’re here feeling humiliated and hurt and I don’t care about anyone else. What the hell does it matter what they say?”

 “You’re the deputy chief of staff, Josh. I’d say it matters a little.”

 “I work for Jed Bartlet. You really think he gives a damn? He asked me to look at the policy agenda, and go over the inauguration speech with Toby and Will, and then he asked me for ideas as to scaring Ellie’s boyfriend off. And then, just as I went to leave the meeting he said, ‘Josh, see that Donna’s okay, won’t you?’ That’s who I answer to.”

 As she looked him in the eye, she knew he was withholding something. “What have you done?”

 “What makes you think I’ve done anything?”

 “Oh God. You’ve done something stupid. Josh.” Donna agitatedly gesticulated her frustration. Everything was unravelling. The tightly wound thread that repressed her heart was coming undone, and it was all out of her control. It wasn’t even that Josh knew. Everybody did: her friends, his enemies, strangers.

 “Donna.”

 “Josh, what did you do?”

 Josh looked to the floor, as though searching for the right answer. If he could articulate it right, she would accept him. “I don’t know. I told the truth. Donna, you wrote about the way you decorate your desk with pictures of us together and how you feel when I'm leaning over you and the fact that you fell in love with me over an ID pass four and a half years ago. How could you think that wouldn’t make me... that I wouldn’t…”

 Now she was crying. “Please stop, Josh.”

 “I love you, Donna,” he said abruptly. “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love you. And that’s what I told ‘em.”

 Donna’s head dropped suddenly. She felt a rush of blood to her head. It prevented any coherent thoughts from forming. His admission didn’t lessen her humiliation. Every bit of autonomy she’d had was usurped. Unaware that Cliff already had been, she imagined that it wouldn’t be long before they were issued with more subpoenas, their names already at the centre of a media storm. Hell.

 Josh grew impatient, watching Donna’s emotions get the better of her. He felt awkward stood in the doorway still and unsubtly edged forwards. She fell into his arms like the heavy crash of a waterfall meeting its end. She didn’t say anything, just buried her head in the crook of his neck.

 “I can’t believe you’ve read my diary.”

 “Well, I can’t believe that you told Margaret and CJ about my fungal infection.”

 “Yes. You must feel so humiliated,” she said, dryly.

 Josh smiled and softly moved his hand to her cheek as they parted a little, looking each other in the eye at last. It was a new kind of intimacy that stirred a deep sigh.

 “So what do we do?”

 Josh just shrugged. “Order a pizza?”

 She thought for a moment about pushing him some more but instead smiled, tired of resisting him. It was a light, happy smile. “Okay.” 

That night Donna introduced Josh to sausage pizza and they curled up on her sofa watching The Daily Show. Late, late into the night she told him in person, for the first time, that she loved him. He was already asleep, probably in a food coma from the amount of pizza he’d eaten. She'd have plenty more chances though. And it wasn’t like he didn’t already know.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is very welcome!


End file.
